Doing Away with Membership

A church in Raleigh, North Carolina has done away with membership as a way of "belonging" to church.  Instead, they encourage their people to embrace another way of viewing their relationship to their local church and its mission: ownership. 

Clubs, gyms and book clubs have memberships and they are "painless to obtain and even easier to discard," according to some of the leaders of this Vintage Church.  I get that.  I have a membership to the YMCA that I have ignored for more than a year.  My "participation" in my membership at the Y has only been sporadic at best.  Membership means very little in today's culture.  Ownership, however, implies an investment and an interest in the wellbeing of the Church and its mission.  If followers of Christ are co-heirs of his kingdom, we possess a piece of this kingdom; we own it.  "An owner makes the organization happen," leaders of Vintage say. "Jesus wants his followers to make the church happen—go out and love people, nurture each other, and serve with your whole life. Ownership is a higher call than membership."

The same is true of fellowship - our word for this week.  Membership, alone, does not describe what is necessary for true, biblical fellowship to take place.  Ownership does.  Remember in Genesis 4, after Cain has killed his brother Abel, when God comes and asks Cain where Abel is?  Cain responds, "I don't know.  Am I my brother's keeper?"  Wrong answer.  The fact that Cain would answer in such a way, I think, demonstrates his sin.  He has not taken ownership in the fellowship God intended them to have with one another.  He has not taken onwership of his own sin or his part in the broken relationship with his brother.  When you and I fail to take ownership in the church, to invest in one another and the mission with our presence, time, energy, relationships and ministry gifts - when we fail to share our lives with one another, or to get together and to get real with one another - we, too, devalue what it means to be a part of the Church.  We are our brother's keeper.  We are our sister's keeper.

In whom has God called you to invest?  With whom might you get together and get real this week?

Sing, Shout, Jump, Dance!

This week, a rather light post.  On Sunday we looked at worship in Psalm 66 and one of the points I lifted up for consideration was how often commands like "sing" and "shout" pop up in the pages of Scripture.  As adults, of course, we sometimes struggle with such commands as we fear obeying them may make us look foolish or reveal our lack of talent for such things.

KBAM (Kids' Bible Adventure @ Miller) started on Sunday evening and I was struck by the straightforward lack of concern for what others might think of these kids as they worshiped God with songs and shouting and jumping and dancing.  The psalmist would have been pleased.  Even more fun to watch, of course, are the wonderful teens and adults who also jumped right in - equally unconcerned with the opinions of others.  Enjoy this video from our opening night of worship at KBAM.

Fully Alive!

Irenaeus, an early leader in the Church, who died toward the end of the second century, once said,  "The glory of God is man fully alive."  What he meant by that is that we give the most glory to God - we worship him to the our fullest capacity - when we become what human beings were created to be.  

Our Know Statement for Sunday's sermon was: Apprentices worship God by living transformed lives.  That's not all there is to worship, of course.  But the art of presenting ourselves as living sacrifices is all about being transformed.  If worship is living transformed and transforming lives, and if discipleship is the means by which we are transformed, then it follows that discipleship is a form of worship.  You and I worship God when we become more like Christ.  Christ is the prototype of what it means to be truly human and "fully alive."  The process of becoming more like the prototype is discipleship.

To be certain, discipleship does require something of us, of course: there is a cost.  But the late Dallas Willard famously challenges us not to talk so much about "the cost of discipleship" that we neglect to consider "the cost of non-discipleship."  In other words, seeking to be transformed more and and more into the image of Christ can be a painful and challenging process, but it is far worse to remain just as we are.  He writes,

The cost of discipleship is great, but the cost of non-discipleship far greater. . .Non-discipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil.  In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).

I've quoted that passage from Willard time and time again.  It is one of my favorites because it reminds me that though discipleship asks me to deny myself and take up my cross, there is blessing and tremendous value added to my life in the process as well.   When I engage in this worship/discipleship/apprenticeship process, herky-jerky as it is from time to time, I am moving toward that fully human, fully alive state of being through which my very existence gives glory to God. I am worshiping God at the most fundamental level!

May we all find the grace to dwell in the overlap between this present age and the age to come this week and always.  May we all worship God with all that we are and all that we are becoming.  Amen.

Depp, Bieber and Jesus...

I've witnessed my daughter adoring Johnny Depp from afar, and even Justin Bieber for a season (though she probably wouldn't admit that now).  When she was much younger she would just gaze at Johnny in Pirates of the Caribbean, lovestruck.  Her Bieber phase was brief, but I'm pretty certain she still adores Depp.  

A couple of years ago, when we were taking her on trips to colleges and preparing for her next phase of life, one of the schools we looked at was in Evansville, Indiana - just across the river from Johnny Depp's boyhood home in Owensboro, Kentucky.  Rachelle's mother and she made a point of finding the address online, driving by and taking a picture of the home little Johnny Depp lived in 35 years ago, or so.  She adores him, I tell you.

On Sunday we launched our new series on Apprentice[ship] in which we will explore passages on several words (all ending with the suffix, ship - because it's cooler that way) that describe some of what it means for us to apprentice ourselves to Jesus and BECOME all that he hopes we can become.  Our passage on Sunday was Mark 3.13-19, Jesus' calling of the first disciples.  One of the points we considered was the importance of being with Jesus - a phrase Mark actually uses in the passage describing Jesus' purposes in appointing the disciples.  We talked about being with Jesus as nothing new in terms of how it's done, however.  It is spending time in Scripture, in prayer, in disciplines that make for spiritual growth and even in community with others.

In Luke 10.38-42 Jesus is in the home of Mary and Martha.  Martha is busy getting things ready for dinner and her guests, while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus, adoring him as if he were Johnny Depp.  Martha complains that Mary is not helping with all of the work and Jesus says to her,  “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

We might want to chime in that what Martha was doing was important too.  I mean, someone’s got to get dinner ready for crying out loud.  And that would be true, but that’s not why this story is in the Bible.  This story is in our Bibles because God wants us to know that what is most important is not our service for Jesus, but our devotion to him.  What is most important is not that we do things for Jesus, but that we learn to be with him first of all - and know that he wants to be with us.  When we practice being with Jesus everything else begins to fall in place.  

I think it’s fascinating that Jesus says, “few things are needed – or indeed only one…”  What happened there?  Did Jesus mess up?  Did he forget what he wanted to say and correct himself?  Or did he simply speak in such a way in order to emphasize the reality we need to hear: being with Jesus is the single most important calling on our lives.  “Only a few things are truly necessary, Martha – in fact only one.  Learn to be with me as Mary has."  That’s where true apprenticeship begins.

What about you?  Are you spending time at Jesus' feet these days?  Watching him as he interacts with people in the gospels?  Listening to his teaching, going over it several times in one sitting, mulling over its truth?  Jesus is not, thankfully, Depp or Bieber.  He's far more interesting than that.  Be with him.